Chef Infra Overview
- The following image shows the relationship b/w various components of Chef infra, included the nodes, the server and the workstation
Chef Infra Server
- This can be installed on Linux machines (Virtual/Physical)
- The software that needs to be installed on the Linux Machine is Chef Server software Refer Here
- The chef infra server i.e. installed on Linux Machines is free for usage till 10 Nodes
- Chef also offers a hosted chef server (chef pre-installed) manage.chef.io which is free for usage till 5 nodes
- Chef Server can store
- cookbooks
- run_list: This is list of recipes to be applied on each node. Chef Server maintains one run_list per node
- secrets
- policy
Chef Workstation
- In Chef Architecture, we can have multiple workstation
- In Chef, we develop cookbooks
- Cookbook is collection of recipes
- Each recipe will have resources that needs to be arranged in some order.
- Using Chef Workstation, we can author, test and maintain cookbooks
- Chef Workstation also provides tools to test your cookbooks
- Chef Workstation is packaged with tools such as
- Chef infra client
- Chef InSpec
- Test Kitchen
- Cook style
- Command line tools:
- Knife
- Chef
Nodes
- A node is any device- Physical, virtual, cloud, network device etc.
- On the nodes the chef-infra client software should be running and it should communicate with the chef server.
- To make any linux/windows system as Chef node, we need to install and configure chef-client. This process of installing chef-client on a node is called as bootstrapping
Chef Workflow Practical View
- Create an account in manage.chef.io as we get the hosted chef server.
- Download the starter kit.
- Download the chef workstation on your system Refer Here and install it
